Last week at the IABM’s market workshop meeting in the UK, I presented an overview of the Big Broadcast Survey. During the presentation, I talked about how there is dramatic variation in the perception of broadcast industry vendor brands, based on factors such as geography and customer type.

I used an example of how the perception of one company whose brand I studied is very different based on who you ask, and where the people you ask are located. A number of people contacted me after the presentation to discuss this topic, so I am posting the charts from this part of the presentation here.

I didn’t name the company during the IABM presentation, and I am not going to name it here. The reason for showing this is not to single out one vendor (believe me, there are plenty of similar examples). Instead, it’s to highlight the fact that brands may be perceived very differently in different parts of the world. The broadcast industry, like many B2B markets, is global and vendors (large and small) need to be aware of the regional differences.

Keep in mind that when looking at these charts, they all show the perception of the same company’s brand — just from different perspectives.

Let’s start by looking at how this company is perceived by broadcasters.

I surveyed more than 1000 broadcasters about a variety of topics, including their perception of vendor brands. The resulting broadcast industry brand status “league table” is shown below, with the company in question highlighted in red.

So what do broadcasters think of this company?

As you can see, this brand:

is very well regarded by broadcasters in the Americas

falls to the middle of the pack with broadcasters in EMEA

is not held in a particularly high regard by broadcasters in Asia

Next, let’s look at how a different group of respondents, systems integrators, view this company based on the same criteria.

Here are the results:

SIs are an important partner for any broadcast technology vendor, and in some cases their opinion of a company can mean the difference between winning and losing a lucrative deal.

To sum up this one:

SIs in the Americas like this company a LOT.

SIs in EMEA regard it as being in the middle of the pack

SIs in Asia appear to not think much of this company

Finally, let’s move away from brand status, and look at a key brand driver, customer service. Rather than look at customer service from the perspective of a specific customer category, I’ve summarized the rankings on a regional basis.

Once again — as shown below — this company is perceived very differently in different parts of the world. They rank #2 in one region and #11 in a different region.

So what’s the take-away from this?

Vendors need to understand that the perception of their brand is one of the things that can drive their business, so they need to pay attention to the way they are perceived.

If you’re interested in reading more about this, be sure to download the free summary report from the Big Broadcast Survey. It’s 26 pages long and gives a good overview of some of the broadcast industry’s leading brands, broken down regionally.